And, indeed, the transformation visible on that countenance, which de Güldenfeldt had known so well in former days, was enough not only to astonish, but to paralyze the bravest man. For the face was no longer human. It was almost that of a fiend.
Lord Martinworth was looking straight at Pearl. His blue eyes, which she had always known so soft and tender, so gentle and so kind, gleamed wildly, seeming to be charged with lightning under the contracting eyebrows. His mouth was slightly open, and through the sneering lips shone the white teeth, while the nostrils of the delicate nose were quivering with excitement and with rage. Features so transformed were sufficient in themselves to terrify the most courageous. But an expression of bitter, overwhelming hate and fury, resting like a veil upon the livid face, completed the appalling picture.
He did not say a word. He hardly seemed to breathe. But he stood--for what seemed to the spectators an endless period--staring at Pearl Nugent with those frenzied eyes. With one hand half-lifted before her, as if to shut off the sight, and with the other clutching de Güldenfeldt's arm, she looked back, white and trembling with fear, yet as if half-hypnotised, into Martinworth's face.
At last the tension proving more than she could bear, Pearl gave one little piteous moan, and sank unconscious upon the earthern floor of the shed.
This alarming occurrence roused all from the spell that had hitherto held them silent and inactive. Martinworth, casting one last look of infinite hatred and contempt at the inanimate form, turned and left the hut, while de Güldenfeldt and Amy, bending over Pearl, and engrossed in their attempts to restore her back to consciousness, hardly noticed that he was gone.
For long their efforts seemed unavailing. But at last Pearl slowly opened her grey eyes, smiling sweetly at de Güldenfeldt as he leant over her. Then consciousness and memory returning, the terrified expression shadowed once more the pale face.
"Where is he?" she whispered, starting up. "Has he gone?"
"Yes, my darling, he has gone away," replied Amy, taking the still trembling form in her arms. "You have nothing to fear, Pearl."
"He is gone! And you did not kill him!" exclaimed Pearl, tearing herself from Amy's arms, and facing de Güldenfeldt. "Oh God! you let him go? You did not kill him? And you call yourself a man?"
Stanislas de Güldenfeldt's first expression of surprise changed to one of sorrow. At the moment it seemed to him that this most uncalled-for and unexpected attack was a return of Pearl's illness and delirium.